Guest written by: Maurice Hamilton, Global CEO of The SMC Group

Marketing doesn’t just include discovering innovative ideas and ways to deliver a brand to the right audience. It also includes smart budgeting and effective utilization of resources to achieve optimal results. You might know where to spend but the real question is ‘how do you spend?’.

It is important to understand the goal of a campaign prior to budgeting. Whether the goal is to build clientele or boost customer and public engagement with a brand, understanding which areas in a campaign require the most attention before allocating budget is key.

Know your audience
To ensure that budget is effectively utilized, understanding the brand’s audience and potential audience is essential. From audience interests, to their age-group, to their ethnicity, identifying what the personas of the target audience helps brands to decide where to allocate budget.

Allocating budget to an expat brand ambassador or lead artist for a campaign of a local brand that targets an Emirati audience will not yield the desired results. However, appointing a popular Emirati personality will aid in accomplishing a successful campaign.

Spend right
The staggering rise in competition makes it easy to stray and spend budget on activities that may not be in the best interest of the campaign’s success. Understanding the end-goal of the campaign is vital. Investing resources and budget in relevant events or core workshops that can help build and maintain brand awareness can boost audience engagement.

Moreover, investing in pop-up events is another cost-effective crowd pleaser. All integrated campaigns must include budget for digital spend both paid and earned across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Get creative
Do things that have never been done before. Allocate budget towards components of the campaign that will yield the best results. Professional shoots and videos of product/service, flyers, banners for events, event set-up costs all require budget and can prove to be vital to a campaign’s success. An effective way to analyze the best creative angle for a campaign is to step out of the brand and understand what consumers and clients are looking for.

With campaign defined as a planned course of action formulated to achieve defined objectives, budget is the driving force, also the make-or-break, behind a campaign. Whether a large sum is spent on a campaign or a cost-effective path is chosen, budget will always define the level of success a brand can reach.